A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and the author of Friday Night Lights, Buzz Bissinger here captures the strategic and emotional complexities of baseball through its quintessential form, the three-game series. In a 2003 battle with archrival Chicago, we watch the St. Louis Cardinals from the dugout, through the eyes of legendary manager Tony La Russa.

"A three-game series ... provides an opportunity to explore the quirks of the contemporary game; clubhouses offer four flavors of sunflower seeds, for instance, while a Cardinals' relief pitcher performs his pregame rituals in the nude. La Russa comes across as a passionate, conflicted man. He's an animal-rights activist who drives an Escalade, and an information omnivore prone to misusing baseball statistics; and, while he's the sixth-winningest manager in history, he still gets so upset about losing that he has been known to stomp off the team bus and walk in solitude back to his hotel after a defeat."—The New Yorker